Attack of the Mutant Underwear (2 page)

But before I could panic, she smiled. “Welcome! You must be Cody. Come on in! You can take that seat in the back on the left.”

I looked to where she was pointing, and my stomach dropped. Sitting right behind the empty chair was the girl from Mattingly's. I turned to run, like you would from a hungry bear. But then a wide-bodied kid whose name turned out to be Emerson raised his hand and said to Ms. B, “He could sit here instead. I could move back there.” And in a blink I was in the front row, far from the girl from Mattingly's. Whew!

Which is pretty much how the whole day went. Every time something seemed like it was going to go Old Cody wrong, and I was sure the New Me would soon be nothing but bear bait, I'd scoot out of the trap like it had no teeth at all.

Even in reading group, when I was sitting right across from the girl from Mattingly's (her name is Amy), and I looked up from my book to see her staring at me. I thought, She's going to blab to everybody! But she didn't say a word.

Whew-double-whew! My nightmare didn't come true. The bear didn't eat me. I survived my first day at my new school. No, I did better than survive. I
aced
it!

But, man, am I tired. Being the New Me wears a guy out. My hand aches, too, from all this writing. I'm outta here.

Wednesday, September 6

My hand is still tired, so this will be short. I'll just keep to the important facts I discovered today:

—
Important fact #1:
The most popular kid in my class is Tyler. Not only is he popular (even with the girls), but he's also really good at spelling, and math, and football, and soccer, and just about everything. His best friend is Zach, who keeps staring at me when he thinks I'm not looking.

—
Important fact #2:
Amy's best friend is named Libby. They are having a contest to see how long they can make their new pencils last.

—
Important fact #3:
Emerson, the guy who gave up his front-row seat for me, eats even more junk food than I do. Today in PE he told me he wants to be an actor when he grows up. I tried to imagine him up on stage or in a movie, but my brain kept saying, “This does
not
compute!”

—
Important fact
#4: Ms. B
loves
Ralph the hamster. She talks to him and calls him Ralphster. She's got his cage inside an old TV cabinet so we can watch “hamster-vision.” It only gets one channel, though—the Hamster Channel.

—
REALLY Important fact
#5: I, Cody Lee Carson—as in the one and only New Me—am in the top reading group! First time ever in my entire life.

Who's da man?

I'M
da man!

Friday, September 8

Spelling test today—did New Me great.

Multiplication tables pop quiz—oops, Old Me not so great.

But after that I read aloud—did I mention that I'm in the top reading group?—and Ms. B said I read with “expression.”

Then she gave the class a writing assignment: “Write about what you did during the summer.”

We groaned. At the start of the school year, every kid in the entire universe has to write about what they did during the summer.

Ms. B added, “On a porch.”

Yep, a porch. Could be our porch, a friend's porch, Grandma's porch, whatever porch we want. But we have to write a paragraph about what we did, or saw, or heard, or smelled, or thought during the summer, on a porch. It's due in one week.

You want it, Ms. B, you got it. I'm Cody Lee Carson, ace-brilliant-type-author-guy.

Who always did want to write about a porch.

Sunday, September 10

Emma is one smart cat. She doesn't like stale water in her bowl, so she's figured out how to turn on the faucet in the downstairs bathroom. Dad says he'd have no problem with that if she'd just turn the water off when she's done.

Instead of writing about Emma, what I should be doing right now is writing about a porch. Only problem is that it's different when you're writing for a teacher, and a grade. It seems … I don't know, just harder, that's all.

Maybe I'll go for a bike ride instead.

Wednesday, September 13

Ms. B brought a fancy electric pencil sharpener to school for us. It's not as noisy as our regular one and lots faster. I stuck my brand-new #2 in there and it almost got eaten alive. (Amy and Libby are still having their short pencil contest. They'd better watch out!)

I told Ms. B we should name her sharpener Godzilla since it has such a big appetite. “Very clever, Cody,” Ms. B said, then announced to the class: “From now on the sharpener will be known as Godzilla.”

She called me clever,
very
clever. Teachers have called me lots of things, but never that. Very clever is the same as brainy, in case you didn't know. Cody-Lee-New-Me-Very-Clever-Brainy Carson!

Thursday, September 14

Yikes! I just remembered: the porch paragraph is due tomorrow, and I haven't even started!

Later, Thursday, September 14

Whew! Done! And pretty amazing, if I do say so myself. Although bad porch ideas kept popping into my mind, I thought about those state tests we take—you know, where you have to write a descriptive paragraph—and I described watching the sunset from my front porch. This is it:

Oh, the sublimity porch, where I sit prismatic and watch the cadaverous birds roost in the punctilious tree! The crepuscular sun shines through the excrutiation leaves, and casts shadows of conniption at my feet! I redolent, and smile! Oh, the sublimity porch!

Beautiful, huh? That's how Shakespeare and those other dead guys wrote. I used the thesaurus to find the big fancy descriptive words. Then I checked all the spelling, and punctuation, too. I copied the whole thing over onto Mom's stationery and put it in one of those binders with the clear plastic on the front. It looks really halcyon. Ms. B will love it. It's called “A Porch to Remember.” I'm bound to get a New Me ace-brilliant-type-author-guy A.

Friday, September 15

Turned in “A Porch to Remember.” I wanted Ms. B to read it right then and there, and tell me how great it is, and that it should be published. But she just said, “Thank you,” and put it in a pile.

Saturday, September 16

MC invited a kid from her kindergarten class over to play. He has big ears, and wears a Mariners cap that pushes them out even more. His name is Jordy.

It rained for the first time in forever. MC and Jordy jumped up and down in the biggest mud puddle in the neighborhood until they were totally covered with brown ooze. (Jordy even had it in his big ears.)

Sunday, September 17

I keep thinking that I should have a for-real title for this journal, especially since this will be a priceless exhibit in the Cody Lee Carson Museum of Really Great Literature.

Titles are important, you know. When you look at a book on the shelf in the library (like the Benton Library, where my mom works), that's the first thing you see. If the title is interesting, you'll pick the book up. If it's not, then you probably won't. Like if I wrote a book called
Book #1,
you'd pass right on by. So I have to come up with something good.

But I still can't think of a title for this journal. I guess I'll just call it
Put Title Here
for now.

Monday, September 18

Thought I'd get “A Porch to Remember” back today with a big A at the top, but Ms. B's not done grading yet.

I guess she's been too busy thinking—about field trips. Because today after lunch she said, “If we could go anywhere together as a class, where would you like to go?”

Tyler said, “The Grand Canyon.”

I liked that idea. I've always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. Ms. B said it was a good idea, but would take too long to get there.

Libby suggested the beach. “Let's go out on the ocean looking for whales!”

“Whales are my favorite animals,” Ms. B said, “but I get seasick just washing the dishes.”

While I was busy trying to figure out if Ms. B was joking, Amy said that since we'll be studying ecosystems a lot in science this year, maybe it would help us to understand them better if we camped out in the middle of one.

Everybody
liked that idea, including Ms. B. All the kids wanted to leave tomorrow, but Ms. B said that a trip like that takes lots of planning
and
money. “We'll need to work really hard to raise enough to go.” We all said we would, so Ms. B said okay. And just like that, it was settled. In June we're going on an Incredible-Fantastic-End-of-the-Year Camp-Out! Yahoo!

Tuesday, September 19

Today during U.S. history, Ralphster the hamster tried to climb out of his TV cage and got stuck behind his exercise wheel. He started squealing and going crazy. Amy jumped up and was to the rescue before Ms. B could even get out from behind her desk. After Amy freed him, both she and Ms. B petted the top of his little head and kissed it like he was a real baby, and kept saying, “Are you all right, Ralphster?”

I like Ralphster fine and would give the Hamster Channel pretty high ratings. But I could
never
kiss a rodent.

After we got back to business, Ms. B announced that we, the students of Garfield Elementary, will be picking a fifth grader as the new president of the student council.

“A third grader will serve as secretary,” Ms. B said, “a fourth grader as vice president.” She swirled her hands around as she talked, like she was painting a wonderful picture for us. “But
only
a fifth grader may be elected president.”

I thought, Hmm—Cody Lee Carson, student council president. Has a nice ring to it.… But no, I'm too busy being an ace-brilliant-type-author-guy to get into politics.

Speaking of brilliant writing, here's my latest (it's a poem, in case you didn't know):

There once was a guy, the New Me,
who was as popular as can be.
He never goofed up,
or whined like a pup.
Cooler than cool was he!

I'm sure it'll end up in the Cody Lee Carson Museum of Really Great Literature, along with “A Porch to Remember.”

Speaking of which, it's
still
not back. I guess Ms. B is waiting to hear which New York publisher is going to turn it into a best-seller.

Wednesday, September 20

In the cafeteria Libby told us she'd read an article in
USA Today
that said that only 21 percent of kids who bring lunch to school pack it themselves. “Moms do 64 percent,” she said, “and dads 11 percent. But here's the weird part: 4 percent of kids have no idea who packs their lunch.”

Tyler shook his head. “I used to let anybody pack mine, until last year when Aunt Emily put in a liver pate sandwich.”

Zach said, “That's nothing. My mom makes me slug sandwiches every day. Anybody want a bite?”

Zach is all the time talking about gross things like slugs and boogers. He'll point and say, “There's a slug on your shoe!” even when there isn't. Or he'll act like he's picking his nose and flicking boogers up on the ceiling. He'll keep looking up there, then pretend the boogers drop on someone's head, like Emerson's. I used to do that kind of stuff when I was the Old Me, but not anymore.

Anyway, back to the cafeteria. Everybody cringed and said things like “Yuck! No!” and “Eeeeuw, gross!”

But Amy didn't bat an eye, not even when Zach shook his sandwich in her face. She just said, “Thanks, I'd love to, but I'm a vegetarian. See?” She picked up three Tater Tots and started juggling them, then caught them—one, two, three—in her mouth!

And all this time I'd been thinking that the only things Amy was good at were school and keeping quiet about seeing me in my … you know, my underwear, and making her pencil last a long time. But she's got talent!

Thursday, September 21

I can't believe it, I got a
C
on “A Porch to Remember.” Yes, a C, as in “just average.” The New Me is not just average. The New Me is an ace-brilliant-type-author-guy who used all those cool words from the thesaurus, and got the spelling right, and the punctuation, too.

At the top of my paper Ms. B wrote, “Don't try to impress me—just write. Find your true voice.”

My
true
voice? All my true voice is saying right now is “Ugh!”

Friday, September 22

Worked hard on my math today, to show Ms. B that I'm not just average at that, too. When I handed it in, she said, “For homework I'd like you to seriously consider running for student council president. Answer due on Monday.”

Sunday, September 24

Been seriously considering running for student council president. Today I ate breakfast thinking about it. Sat in church thinking about it. Walked into Fred Meyer with Mom and Dad and MC to get some teriyaki sauce thinking about it.

Then, as I was standing in aisle 12, I closed my eyes and imagined the New Me as President Cody. I could be great and accomplish many things for the good of Garfield students. Like a longer morning recess. And chocolate milk shakes in the cafeteria. Or maybe soft drinks in the water fountains. Everyone would love it. And they'd love me, too! And chant my name.

“President Cody! President Cody! President Cody!”

I'd be a superstar!

“President Cody! President Cody! President Cody!”

With lots of friends!

“President Cody! President Cody! President Cody!”

When I opened my eyes, there was MC looking up at me with a cantaloupe in her hands. She said, “Whatever you're thinking about doing,
don't.”

Ha! Since when do I need advice from a five-year-old? Ms. B knows my destiny—that's why she suggested it. I'm going to be an ace-brilliant-type-
politician
-guy! Today Garfield Elementary student council president, tomorrow the White House!

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Listen Up, Everybody!
I, Cody Lee Carson, am going for the top!

Monday, September 25